Souper Tuesday: Spicy coconut and sweetcorn soup

For our second Souper Tuesday recipe of 2025, here’s something pleasantly spicy. The core vegetable is sweetcorn, along with carrot, celery and onion.

Bringing an undercurrent of spiciness are star anise, fennel seeds, cardamom pods, dried chillies and Thai lime leaves, which have other names including the one that we South Africans avoid using for fear of causing offence.

This is not a blended soup, as processing would spoil the lovely pops of yellow and green and impair the slightly chunky texture.

It’s all brought together with coconut cream, and it doesn’t take long at all before the soup is ready to eat.

Tony’s coconut vegetable soup

(Makes 2 generous portions with seconds)

Ingredients

3 Tbsp coconut oil

1 large onion, chopped finely

3 celery stalks, diced

2 medium carrots, peeled and diced

2 cobs of corn (sweetcorn)

1.5 litres vegetable stock

3 star anise

8 cardamom pods

2 tsp fennel seeds

3 dried chillies, chopped

4 Thai lime leaves

1 large potato, peeled and grated

400ml coconut cream

Salt to taste

Black pepper to taste

Coriander leaves, chopped, for garnish

Method

Melt the coconut oil in a soup pot. Add the onion and cook for 2 or 3 minutes, then add the celery and carrot. (Don’t add the corn yet.) Cook gently for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the vegetable stock, cardamom, star anise, fennel seeds, chillies and Thai lime leaves, and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and grate in the potato.

Simmer for 5 minutes, then add the coconut cream and stir well.

While the pot is simmering, trim the cobs of any fibres, and slice off the kernels with a sharp knife. Add them to the soup and stir. They’re added late because if cooked too long they risk losing their crunch.

Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Be careful not to under- or over-salt it. The only way to do this is to add salt, stir and taste, and add a little more salt at a time until it is just right. Bear in mind that you can add more salt but you can’t take it out.

Simmer the soup for about 20 minutes. Stir along the way. 

Serve with a sprinkling of chopped coriander (cilantro) leaves. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023

Order Tony’s book, foodSTUFF, here.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed on a plate by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.